It's give and take with 8ta | ITWeb

Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

According to analysis, mobile newcomer 8ta's per-minute billing makes its offerings more expensive.
While Telkom's mobile service, 8ta, is cheaper for landline rates, its prepaid offering is billed per-minute and not per-second, making its more expensive.

This is according to independent telecommunications expense management company DataRoom.

DataRoom, which helps clients manage their telecommunications expenses by examining their itemised billing, used random samples of typical call detail records (CDRs), or itemised bills.

The rates used were as published on the various mobile operators' Web sites last week and do not take into account changes announced by Vodacom this morning.

The research was done in three exercises. The first related to overall call patterns and was an analysis of 1 400 090 minutes from GSM voice contracts, reflecting the following split: 40.16% of talk time minutes terminating to MTN, 40.34% of talk time minutes terminating to Vodacom, 7.15% of talk time minutes terminating to Cell C, and 12.35% of talk time minutes terminating to a fixed-line.

DataRoom found it was not an effective comparison to calculate the ultimate rand difference overlaid on various prepaid contracts. It also points out that individual call patterns vary greatly and must be contextualised for individuals.

The second exercise was for a sample of 210 CDRs, with the 8ta call rates of per minute increments compared to a per-second rate to mobile and fixed-line of R1.75 per minute, that was billed per second. This exercise excluded incoming rebates offered on 8ta on a promotional basis and SMS costs.

Of the 210 CDRs, 25 were to Telkom landlines, and DataRoom found the R1.75 rate that was billed per-second by the other network operators was 25% more cost-effective than the 8ta rates.

The final exercise was a random sample of 375 CDRs with the 8ta per-minute billing increment, compared to a per-second rate to mobile and fixed-line of R1.75 per-minute, that was billed per-second. Again, the incoming rebates offered by 8ta were not considered and neither were SMS costs.

DataRoom found 8ta was 18% more cost-effective than the R1.75 flat rate comparative.

Call management

Observations by DataRoom were that peak and off-peak times are not transparently displayed on the various mobile operators' Web sites, which makes it difficult for consumers to manage their own call patterns where rates for peak and off-peak differ.

DataRoom says Vodacom, MTN and Cell C reflect the billing increments in their respective rate sheets.

Thirdly, DataRoom says 8ta does not reflect its offering as billed per-minute. “This means that for a 10-second call, you will pay for one minute. This is important to know, as it impacts heavily on the resulting effective rate the consumer pays. This is contradictory to costs being fully transparent to the consumer,” says the DataRoom analysis.

The analysis states 8ta's base cost (without value-adds) is the same as the Cell C Easychat AllDay offering.

DataRoom says 8ta's offering of one free second per call for every three seconds of incoming calls received is only valid for a limited promotional period, but that 8ta has not disclosed the duration of this period.

It says the free SMSes offering by 8ta, whereby 50 free SMSes are granted for every five paid ones, is a new offering to the market and is a significant differentiator for the consumer who uses text a lot.

Commenting on the DataRoom analysis, World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says: “It seems that Cell C do have a point in that 8ta have effectively copied their rates. However, the analysis shows some interesting points, like just how cheap an SMS is for a telecoms utility.”

Goldstuck says his own research has shown that cellular calls billed per-minute are at least 40% more expensive than those billed per second.